With real-time analytics, you can make instant decisions. You know what’s working and what’s not during an important launch. You can also use that data to set up marketing automation that’s triggered by data-driven customer segments and real user behaviour.
There are so many exciting things you can achieve with real-time analytics that we decided to help get your brainstorming juices flowing by showing you five simple ideas.
Why capture real-time analytics?
Real-time analytics, unlike site analytics that you view at a later date, can show you what’s happening on your website right now.
With web analytics reports that are updated continuously you open your business up to instant decision making:
- Find any sudden drops in traffic.
- Discover trends and differences or issues in standard patterns.
- Know which pages and products are getting the most traffic at any time.
- Capture visitor behaviour in real-time.
If you only look at web analytics from previous weeks or months, then you can learn how to improve your site experience, traffic generators, etc., but you can’t make instant decisions at that moment that will immediately impact revenue.
1. Engage site visitors who have viewed your pricing page multiple times
There are individual pages on your website that reveal a high level of interest and intent. Certain behaviours can show the same thing.
Here are some examples of how to tell that someone is seriously considering buying from you:
- Viewed your pricing or subscription page 2+ times (SaaS or publishing)
- Viewed a product page 2+ times (ecommerce)
- Has been on your site three times in less than five days (any business that sells online)
All of these show that the person is doing their due diligence. They’re looking into the details to collect the information they need to make a purchase.
Sometimes, people need a little help from your team to make a decision. You can add a highly effective sales channel to your website by implementing live chat.
You can set up marketing automation that works like this:
- Someone is on your pricing page for the second (or higher) time
- You show an automated chat prompt that asks if they have any questions
- The website visitor replies to the automated chat prompt
- Your team takes over the conversation from there
If you’re not able to man your inbox frequently, there’s still plenty you can do to take advantage of real-time analytics and website behaviour.
For example, instead of a chat prompt that asks site visitors to share their questions, you can instead write a chat prompt that includes a link to FAQs, your reviews page, or a case study. These can also help finalise sales decisions for site visitors that are on the fence.
2. Send paid traffic to your best-performing products or pages
Let’s say that you have an ecommerce site and you’re launching a new collection or product line. For example, a cosmetics collection might include a shadow palette, highlighter, blush, etc.
By looking at your real-time website analytics dashboard, you discover that the highlighter is getting the most sales and the most page views from organic traffic like social media and your email list.
Since you know what’s performing the best, you know which product to feature more heavily in your Facebook and Instagram ads. You can send traffic directly to the sales page for the blush, so you have a higher chance of recovering that ad spend. Then you can retarget those page visitors with other products in the collection.
All of these decisions and actions can be made on the same day that you launch.
With real-time analytics, there’s no waiting to make decisions. However, if you have a small amount of site traffic, you might want to factor in a few days to get enough data.
3. Deliver a special message to site visitors who have never purchased from you before
With a real-time analytics platform that includes a CRM, you can store behavioural data on all site visitors.
This data can be used to create customer filters that help you segment the right people to message at the right time.
Here are some example filters:
- $0 transaction history
- Transaction history over a certain amount
- Order count over a certain amount
- Has downloaded an ebook
- Has not downloaded an ebook
The possibilities are endless.
This is a simple way to utilize real-time analytics: send a message to site visitors who have never purchased from you before. You can send the message to all site visitors who meet these criteria, or to site visitors who have been to your site over a certain number of times, but still have not purchased.
You can send a message to visitors who meet these criteria via a chat prompt that shows up instantly on your site, or with an email that hits their inbox when the requirements are met.
Depending on the nature of your business and your products, here are some ideas for what you might send site visitors who haven’t purchased from you yet:
- A discount off their first purchase to grow your email list and increase the likelihood of purchase
- An offer for a free ebook or training to build your email list
- An announcement about a new product line or a special offer
4. Offer a special discount to site visitors who have previously abandoned a cart
Another way to increase your website sales using real-time analytics is to engage uniquely with website visitors who have previously abandoned their cart.
If your company sells products online, you’ve likely heard about abandoned cart emails. These emails are designed to encourage shoppers to complete their order right away.
But what about a more long term approach?
Let’s say that someone abandons a cart on your site at the end of May. They get a couple of emails from you right around that time. But when they come back to your website in June, and they still haven’t purchased, they’re not treated in any special way. The abandoned cart emails have been sent. That’s done.
Not so fast.
There’s still plenty you can do to increase website sales in the long term.
By now, this person might not be interested in that exact product any more, but at one point, they were interested in it enough to add it to their shopping cart.
Here are the customer filter criteria that you can use to define these visitors:
- Abandoned cart count is higher than 0
- Transaction history is $0
When someone who meets the criteria visits your site, you can message them with something that fits their unique needs. What you know about them is that they were highly interested in one of your products at one point in time, but they still haven’t purchased.
You could offer them a steep discount on a top-performing product that brings people into your brand and is known to inspire future purchases or a product with a high repeat purchase rate. You could also offer them a free resource that converts well so that you get them on your email list.
5. Increase loyalty with regular site visitors
Some website visitors just love your brand. Regardless of how much they’ve purchased from you, they’re fans. They enjoy your content and come and spy on your site often. When you have visitors who have been on your site more than 4 or 5 times in a month, that’s a pretty clear indication that they’re interested in what you do.
Here are some ways that you can capture their attention while you have it:
- Offer membership to a free VIP group, whether that’s a custom-built forum or a Facebook or Slack group
- Offer a discount for a product
- Offer a discount on a subscription
- Invite them to schedule a demo
To run with the gamification nature of this campaign, you can include something cheeky in your message like “We’ve seen you here many times before!” Or “We noticed that you like our content, and we like you too.” Make it clear that they’re getting this message because they’ve interacted with your site multiple times.
It’s important to send this message to the right people. You can send it to site visitors who have visited your site more than X number of times total, or to people who have visited more than X number of times in a specific time period.
Real-time analytics gives you a leg up because you’re not waiting to review your site to make decisions. You’re presetting automation that goes into play based on real, live use behaviour.
